Finlandized Eastern Europe

[Ricardolindo]

How plausible was it for the Soviet Union to treat Eastern Europe the way they did Finland after World War II? Instead of installing communist regimes, they would allow the Eastern European countries to keep their capitalist systems but force them to have a pro-Soviet foreign policy. If this had happened, I feel the Cold War would never have happened or at least would have been far less intense.

 

[TheIO]

Finland only got Finlandised because the Soviets didn't have the willingness to occupy Finland in full.

But when you've got to cross Poland and Romania and so on to get to Germany, they'd be occupied in the process - you'd need to give the Soviets a reason to withdraw from those countries after having the chance to finally put friendly governments there.

 

[ChrisNuttall]

Someone other than Stalin might have been willing to say 'you let us have military bases and suchlike and in return you can do whatever you like inside your own borders,' but I doubt it. The Russians were - and remain - extremely paranoid about who controlled the lands to their west - they'd been invaded three times from the west, twice in living memory. Even someone less paranoid than Stalin would be reluctant to risk 'Finlandising' Eastern Europe.

The military issue aren't the only problem. Without a Moscow-controlled communist leadership, Eastern Europe will rebuild and modernise and generally do much better than the USSR. That's going to cause all sorts of problems to the east ...

 

[Ricardolindo]

The Russians were - and remain - extremely paranoid about who controlled the lands to their west - they'd been invaded three times from the west, twice in living memory. Even someone less paranoid than Stalin would be reluctant to risk 'Finlandising' Eastern Europe.

I would be careful with this because it's an argument made by Russians and their defenders about the Ukraine War.